Early models of leadership—frequently Western and borrowed from the military—were wont to examine the settings in which leaders emerge, and then search for psychological traits. The definite, often heroic endowments they identified typically embraced vision, ideological orientation, charisma, physical vitality and stamina, courage and resolution, intelligence and action-oriented judgment, decisiveness, self-confidence, assertiveness, a need for achievement, eagerness to accept responsibility, task competence, capacity to motivate people, understanding of followers and their needs, skill in dealing with people, trustworthiness, and adaptability. (Not surprisingly, few men or women qualify: inordinate expectations beget commensurate disappointment.)

The archetypal qualities desired from heroic leaders are undoubtedly opportune in dire straits, moments of crisis when the actions of an individual are pivotal. However, "old paradigm" notions of situational, contingency, transactional, and even transformational leadership—all of which smack of command and control more or less overtly—cannot serve the miscellany of "normal" organizations that need leadership in the workplace, not the field of battle. For sure, all over the world, "ordinary" people work with remarkable success in demanding circumstances yet do not advertise superhuman characteristics in their leadership styles.

These days, therefore, leadership is more and more defined as the means of influence by which a person enlists the help of others to accomplish tasks of common interest. Exercising Servant Leadership and Distributing Leadership, available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254582899_Exercising_Servant_Leadership and https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254583108_Distributing_Leadership, respectively, may be of interest.

Article Exercising Servant Leadership

Article Distributing Leadership

Thanks Olivier for the elaborate response and also for sharing links to your works. For me, Leadership has always been about one's ability to influence goals and behaviours of others. Thanks for reinforcing that idea through your response.

Going by this idea of leadership, identification of leaders itself will become an elaborate exercise. Is there a "quick" way of identifying people who influence? 

Hi,

Please you can read from Research gate members from Prof Turiman Suandi n Prof Azimi leadership related articles which will help u lot. Or you can search from Google scholar or your library. They are both distinguish researcher.

Thanks Kamal. I will surely look for these resources.

In most types of organizations, formal authority is located at the top as part of an exchange against fairly explicit expectations. In networked, pluralistic organizations that must rapidly formulate adaptive solutions in an increasingly complex world, the power of formal authority is eroding as its functions become less clear. These days, influence depends less and less on formal authority. Increasingly, it is to be found in social networks, which social network analysis seeks to understand by focusing on actors and the relationships between them in specific social contexts. Social Network Analysis, available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301692439_Social_Network_Analysis, is an early article dated 2009 on that subject. With the rise of social media, itself boosted by the surge of mobile computing from 2007, interest has grown in social network analysis of electronic communications. Most likely, social network analysis is set to emerge as a key technique in modern sociology, and ought therefore provide much food for thought about influence and who (or what) wields that. An article on Informal Authority in the Workplace is at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254582905_Informal_Authority_in_the_Workplace. An article on Social Media and the Public Sector is at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292615977_Social_Media_and_the_Public_Sector. A forward-looking, related article titled On Networked Organizations is at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266477071_On_Networked_Organizations.

Article Social Network Analysis

Article Informal Authority in the Workplace

Article Social Media and the Public Sector

Article On Networked Organizations

In research, we identify one as a leader if he or she occupies  a managrial/ administrative position. in schools, leaders are principals, in universities, Deans and VCs, in industries (top, middle and bottom level) managers, in villages, they are sarpanches, etc. Informal leaders possess attributes outlined above. 

Dear I hope the paper titles are interested: 

GENERALIZING NEWCOMERS' RELATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTIFICATIONS: PROCESSES AND PROTOTYPICALITY

Sluss, D. M., & Ashforth, B. E. 2007. Relational identity

and identification: Defining ourselves through work

relationships. Academy of Management Review,

32: 9-32.

Sluss, D. M., & Ashforth, B. E. 2008. How relational and

organizational identification converge: Processes

and conditions. Organization Science, 19: 807-823.

leadership  is a wide concept, it includes leadership in workplace, leadership in society, leadership in house, leadership in group, this kind similarity in some time and different.

all this kinds concerned What a personal culture, Values, experience, Genetic factors, Religious belief, and the important factor that is readiness for learn, develop with new developments.

this a brief my idea            

The big question with identifying leaders is establishing as a researcher what kind of leaders you are looking to find. 

There are many types of leadership theories which explain a large number of different types of leaders. If it is a transformational leader, or a servant leader, or an authentic leader that you are looking to identify, then there are certain behaviours you can interview in order to see if you see them. In a quantitative sense, there are measurements you can use to identify leadership 'scores' to identify if someone adheres to higher degrees of that leadership theory. 

I would take out a leadership theory book and identify what kind of leader you are looking for, and then find an appropriate measure of that leadership style. It is similar to looking for anything - if you are trying to purchase a new car, there may be certain requirements that you have for it e.g. ability to tow a trailer or at least seven seats. 

I hope that helps.

As far as executive leadership is concerned my studies of inter-kibbutz co-operatives found three major yardstick for executive nominations that can minimize the tendency for low-moral mismanagement, that is tendency for non-servant, non-transformational leadership :

1. Having, a habitus of vulnerable involvement in employees problem-solving aimed at learning local problems,

2. Having referred and interactional expertises (Collins and Evens 2007 "Rethinking Expertise") that fit a firm’s major problems,

3. Previous successful trustful servant transformational leadership in lesser offices.

See:  http://dx.doi.org/10.11/MD-10-2014-0620